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The Philosophical Baby: What Children's Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love, And The Meaning Of Life (2009)

by Alison Gopnik(Favorite Author)

3.69 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0374231966 (ISBN13: 9780374231965)

languge

English

genre

Middle Grade & Children's

publisher

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

review 1: Well researched book on the evolving minds of babies. There are no short cuts presented to having a creative, empathetic child, but having a timeline of developmental milestone seems valuable. Actually, it would have been fantastic if the author presented this information at the end in a visual format, just to keep some of the years straight. Looking forward to attending a lecture by the author this week!
review 2: Even as a new(ish) dad I'm not going to dedicate a lot of time (precious, precious time) to reading "baby books", but when I do this is exactly the kind of book I want to read.Written by a developmental psychologist this book looks at what it means to be a child (and by extension parent) from a solid scientific background while also examining the ... moresubject from a philosophical perspective. It surprisingly turns out there's not much philosophy at all devoted to childhood or parenthood (and some of what there is is quite outdated and in at least one case distinctly unpleasant), making this work even more valuable to those interested.A lot of it rang very true; I particularly liked the "lantern consciousness" explanation for childhood perception. The author's style is very clear without being too dry and for me it didn't hurt at all that Gopnik is something of a geek or at least uses some good references - when most mainstream authors reference Star Trek it tends to be something more obvious than the implications of Jadzia Dax's Trill symbiont for memory and learning. less

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